Bullethead

From what I've gathered in my recent crash research program on French planes, it's actually a bit more confusing than this. This is all pretty new to me, too, but I think I'm getting a handle on it. So as I currently understand things, the N24bis was actlually the 1st model in production and service, and was just an interim type until the N24 could come online. What Nieuport was doing was trying to wring all the performance it could out of its basic sesquiplane design in an effort not only to match the Albatros D.III, but also be at least equal to the SPAD 7 which was threatening to take over Nieuport's fighter business. Due to the time pressure, Nieuport couldn't do a new design from stratch so could only add streamlining and bigger engines to what was a rather old design by that point. Nieuport's goal was to make what eventually became the N24, with rounded fuselage, tail, and wingtips. However, the main assemblies of new wing, tail, and fuselage became available at different times, so a number of interim types were built with various combinations. The new fuselage was first, then the wing, then the tail. Apparently, Nieuport was building several types at once as parts became available and some types were built in only small numbers, so the planes didn't all arrive at the front in numerical order. As best I can determine, things were like this: N17: N16 with bigger square wings to handle weight of 110hp motor, plus some minor streamlining on fuselage N23: N17 with 120hp and different interruptor gear (few built) N17bis: N17 with round fuselage and 130hp (few built) N24bis: N17bis with larger wings with rounded tips but retaining square N17 tail (not many built) N24: N24bis with larger, rounded tail (replaced all the above in production from mid-1917) N25: N24 with 200hp (very few built) N27: N24 with modified landing gear (few built) N28: completely new design worked out while all the farting around from N17-N27 was in progress

I have a qestion regarding the ailerons of the N24... The other day, I came across this interesting tidbit: The book goes on to say that the N25 and N27, which were just very slightly modified N24s, also had these strips, at least as they came from the factory. I'd never heard of any of this before. In fact, I'd always heard the V-strutter Nupes were all pretty maneuverable. So my question is, how long did it take to figure out the problem, and how common was it to remove these strips in frontline service? Will the OFF N24 have them or not? Or is this whole thing bogus and unfounded?

This evening I was driving home from my FedEx boss' house were I drop off the truck. The route from his house to mine is along an ancient rural road through the deep woods. It's alll up and down and twisty-turny following an irregular ridge, one of the few routes across this area that doesn't require making a major bridge. I'm sure it grew from a game trail to an Indian trail to a wagon road to what we have today. Needless to say, with its many sharp turns and often high banks on either side, it's not something you should go too fast on. More modern roads with many bridges take straighter, wider routes between the same points, but not as direct (as the crow flies) or scenic, so I take the old way. Besides, it's Halloween and I enjoy watching the ghosts along the old way. In a particularly treacherous stretch of Deadman's Curves about in the middle of this road (as in 5 miles either way from any intersection), I came across a minivan deep in the ditch alongside. I'd been passing 4x4 pickups parked there at intervals for the last few miles, showing were deer hunters had gone into the woods, but they'd been empty and able to get out of the mud (we had about 2" of rain yesterday). This minivan was in the ditch (an old, abandoned road just adjacent to the current path) much deeper, totally mired, and occupied. So I stopped, The woman occupying the minivan was gripping the wheel and staring straight ahead. Her vehicle was on the outside of a sharp curve and long tracks and smashed bushes marked her path overshooting the curve down into the ditch. The driver's side was hard up against the far side of the ditch, and smoke was beginning to pour out of from under the passenger side, marking a grass fire started by the hot exhaust pipe from the still-running motor. Obviously, if she stayed there much longer, she'd be unable to get out. So I walked up and started stomping the fire out while calling 911. AT&T might not be everywhere, but nobody else covers these boondocks. I also yelled at the woman to shut off her motor. She responded by using her button to roll down the passenger side window so she could hear me. I said something along the lines of "SHUT THE %$!#$%*ING MOTOR OFF!!!" She got all hostile at that so it took me a while to make her understand that she was about to be immolated. I think it was only the smoke blowing in through the open window that convinced her to do it. And meanwhile I was trying to talk to the 911 dispatcher (fortunately made of sterner stuff). Anyway, luckily the woman in the car was unhurt so I was able to convince her to get out of the vehicle while I continued to stomp the fire out. Bottom line, the minivan had a messed-up front end, it didn't burn up, and the sole occupant walked away, and I continued on home once the authorities arrived. When I left, she was trying to tell the cops she'd been run off the road by some mystery vehicle which of course hadn't stopped and she couldn't describe the same way twice in a row. But she was on the wrong side of the road for evasive action. I think it pretty obvious she'd been going too fast for this dangerous road, and had been so shocked at her inability to handle it all that she'd have sat there and burned to death if somebody hadn't come along. And that's a sad reflection on universal sufferage.

Welcome aboard, Sieben . Don't mind me. I'm just a grumpy, bitter, cynical old fart who drinks a lot . You'll be the same someday if you live long enough . I must disagree with your asessment of me, however. I'm not egotistical, I'm just harshly judgmental. I've spent a large part of my life picking up the pieces left after amazing acts of stupidity that have shattered countless lives and given me constant nightmares. As a result, I have developed an attitude of zero tolerance for fools, and I believe I have accumulated enough field observational data of fools in their native habitat to know a fool when I see one. I don't exempt myself--everybody is a fool in at least 1 area of behavior. We all should have been drowned at birth. As to the woman in question here, I happen to know she didn't finish high school.

Does your GF have a sister?

Thanks OBD! I've got my credit card already boresighted and am just waiting for the target to appear over the parapet

As Smokey Bear says, 9 out of 10 wildfires are due to human stupidity or maliciousness. From long experience, I'd say it's a higher percentage for wrecks and house fires. It's rather hard to feel sympathetic under such circumstances. I have NEVER been to a wreck that wasn't caused by sheer stupidity. Drinking, driving too fast, talking on a cell phone, or all of the above. One of my favorite neices, dead at 19 years, would be alive today if she hadn't been in such a damn hurry and tried to pass in a curve. She hit a dumptruck head-on, got her A post through the shoulder, and bled out before the ambulance arrived, not that it would have helped her had it been sitting there when her wreck happened. One of the "joys" of being a rural fire/rescue guy is that you're blood to, affiliated with, or at least a drinking buddy of most of the people you have to scrape up or watch their house burn down. But that said, there's no escaping the sense of being counterproductive when you stop nature from taking its course. Nearly everybody has some good qualities. Old Sadam was a devoted father to at least some of his children. Good for him, but look how they turned out. And yes: democracy is, where every idiot is allowed to vote. Nothing's perfect.

What are you doing up so late? But nice sig grahic Well, you KNOW Hopkins will NEVER starve as long as there is "long pig" on the hoof . The sad part is, people like this are given the right to vote. I feel I did a disservice to humanity stomping out the flames that destiny had otherwise ordained to consumer her.

Hehehe, "colonial" German on this side of the pond seems to have incorporated direct translations of old American English slang, and to have taken rather English meanings to some of its own words. Over here, "Frau" invariably means "wife" and "Dame" means "woman" (which is no doubt where 1940s US NY slang "dame" came from). Thus, getting many "Frauen" here means being a serial adulterer, while getting "Damen" means just being your normal rake.

"Poker and women!" That beats "La gloire et les femmes" There's a New York fire company with the motto: "Mehr Damen dann Flammen!" This was inscribed under a pirated St. Pauli girl holding 3 huge flagons in each hand. We had their patch on the wall in our firehouse. Back when I was a smoke-eater, I always wanted to work there

As Murat had engraved on his sabre, "La gloire et les femmes!"

Actually, that's "Ni!" But we are now no longer the Knights Who Say "Ni!" We are now the Knights Who Say "Icky icky icky patang zuuubong!"

Geez, you all are really making all my Nupe wet dreams come true

Very nice. Looks like it's already lost some fabric, too . Too bad about that weakpoint. Otherwise, it seems to have been a fairly decent ride and definitely looked sweet.

I"m surprised at the number of smoke-eaters and roadside brain surgeons there are here. I figured I'd be the only one to own up to those jobs. Good points: it's the next best thing to combat. Bad points: it's the next best thing to combat. So, wipe the blood and soot off your faces and have a drink with me

Well, the D.VII does have an artificial horizon of a sort . BTW, IIRC, the reason the tach was right there in front of your face was so you'd check it before firing your guns. The synchronizer or interruptor or whatever it was only worked properly within a certain band of RPMs. If you fired while outside that RPM band, you might shoot your prop off.

Died less than 1 minute into my 1st mission, which was a scramble. Got vulched before my wheels left the ground. This is why I don't do scrambles.

If I progress far enough in building a plane to have a virtual cockpit, there's going to be a sign in the cockpit that says exactly that. That sounds way easier than making a working altimeter that goes from "counting leaves" to "seeing Earth's curvature", which was my original plan

Beautiful plane. My 2nd fave Nupe after the 28 :). I don't think any Americans today are any more excited about the N.28 than our forebears were back in the day. Looks-wise, it's IMHO one of the sexiest WW1 fighters, and it WAS used (for a brief period) in an important, formative period of the USAAS. However, we all know that it had tragic flaws that make it rather unattractive as a campaign ride. So speaking as an American, the planes I'd most like to see are things like FK8s, DH4s, Albatros 2-seaters, Rumplers, CL-types, and French 2-seaters of all types and eras. IMHO, we have quite enough scouts already. I'm definitely not going to pass on all the pretty Nupes and the E.V that have been announced so far, but IMHO what we really need in the campaign are more 2-seaters.

Quite nice. I've heard the weight and drag of 2 guns robbed these birds of some of their nice maneuverability, so weren't generally liked. Is that true?

It wasn't just rotaries that were like this, but even at least some stationaries. For example, the Beardmore of the Fee didn't much change in RPM from idle to full power. Or so I learned from watching vids on flying a reconstruction with and original Beardmore. What you describe for rotaries reminds me of all the tweaking necesary to get proper throttle response out of an R/C model engine. Adjusting the throttle and idle stop screws, the needle valve, and the throttle control pushrod from the servo. It might take a few hours, even longer if you had to get broken-off stop screws out of the carb after a bad crash

Book Review French Aircraft of the First World War by Dr. James J. Davilla and Arthur M. Soltan ISBN 1-891268-09-0 Flying Machine Press, 1997, 2002 FMP wants a LOT of money for this, but you can find it MUCH cheaper if you look around. Overview Has entries of more or less detail (often a lot) on just about every airplane built in France from just before until just after WW1. Most planes have performance stats, numbers built, dates in service and with which units, photos, and detailed 3-view drawings. This includes not only production machines but also just about every 1-off prototype. Also a large section of color profiles and 3-views showing camo patterns, including different patterns on same plane when built by different companies. In addition, the book has a fair amount of organizational and operational data on both the Aviation Militaire and Aviation Maritime. This helps make sense of a lot of stuff and paints an impressive picture of the French air services in WW1. Good Stuff All of the above. Bad Stuff Suffers from spotty editing. There are numerous instances of incomplete sentences, double words, etc., and occasionally missing paragraphs that cut off in the middle of sentences. There is also an annoying amount of redunancy in the text, like the same things being said in different words in consecutive paragraphs. But this is just a minor quibble in what is otherwise and excellent and very informative book. Stuff I Never Knew This book is full of new info for me. I knew very little about French aviation other than that they made SPADs, Nupes, and such things. The book claims that this is pretty universal because nobody's really done much on the subject before. The primary reason for this is that many French records were destroyed in 1940, so it's been hard to make the data, not only on airplanes but also on the operational and organizational stuff. Hence, the authors decided to include an overview of these latter subjects while they were at it. Here are a few things I didn't know before: 1. That an airplane called the A.R.1 existed. This was like the French RE8, used in vast quantities as their main recon and arty spotter. And like the RE8, it wasn't well-loved, especially by 1918. And it was an unusual design, with the fuselage between the wings like a Brisfit, but with significant back-stagger. 2. That because of the slow arrival of the A.R.1, the French 2-seater squadrons were stuck with Farman pushers (Fee analogs) and Caudrons (Quirk analogs) rather later into 1917 than the RFC, even into early 1918. AND, they started building Strutters under license about the time the RFC and RNAS were abandoning the type. However, by 1918, the Salmsons and Breguet were appearing in large numbers, replacing all these obsolete types. 3. That French squadrons numbered 1-99 were MOSTLY "army cooperation" (although some were bombers), 100-199 were mostly dedicated bombers (although some were army cooperation), and 200-299 were dedicated arty spotters. Squadrons with numbers in the 300 and 500 series were mostly assigned to overseas fronts. Note that the "army cooperation" category includes fighter squadrons as well as 2-seaters. 4. That most French 2-seater squadrons had a few twin-engined 3-seaters on strength for long-range recon and escorting the 2-seaters. 5. That dedicated 3-seater escort squadrons existed that were paired with specific 2-seater bomber and recon squadrons, so always did joint missions. 6. That there was a Morone-salnier parasol fighter that equipped several squadrons in 1918, although for only a month or 2 before being replaced by SPADs. Anyway, I found the book quite fascinating. There were an amazing number of highly imaginative prototypes, some of quite futuristic design. For example, there were several attempts to make a pusher fighter with the prop behind the tail and a sleek, enclosed fuselage enclosing the engine. And there were also quite a few candidates for the Museum of Diseased Imaginings. My favorite was a helicopter with a 1-bladed rotor pushed around by compressed air jets. The engine and compressor counterbalanced the single blade and rotated with it. Control was by a moveable pipe blowing air out in the needed direction.

It's been so long, I can't remember what all mods for RB2/3D I did, apart from FCJ because I'm looking at the CD for that right now. But I sure don't remember the A.R.1 from any of them. One of the interesting things about this kite is that despite the number in service, the thing was obscure even in its own day. Nobody seems to have been quite sure what "A.R." stood for. It wasn't the designer's initials because it was designed by the air force. Renault claimed the "R" was for the Renault engine, and even tried to insist that all planes with Renault engines should have an "R" in the name, but A.R.1s had several types of motors. Some thought it meant Avion Reconaissance, but this apparently wasn't the case, either. When the 1st US 2-seater squadrons got 2nd-hand A.R.1s, they thought it stood for "Antiquated Rattletrap".

Bravo. And always remember: drink today, for tomorrow we may die . Not without tweaking your pilot's text files. Otherwise, once you join a squadron, it's til death do you part. Of course, some squadrons change their names and/or numbers along the way, but it's still the same squadron.

Worked some rather odd jobs through high school and college: tour guide, meter reader, repo man, oilfield worker, etc. Started out in college with an NROTC scholarship and the rank of midshipman but resigned that when my ship nearly blew up one night. So I got married, joined the Marine Reserve, and put The Bitch through school before going back myself. Did a lot of ancient computer stuff in college but finally graduated after 8 years as an engineer and got a job with Vought Aircraft building new planes. Then The Bitch left, I got called up for Desert Storm practically the next day, came back and got laid off from both Vought and the USMC due to the "peace dividend" at the "end" of the Cold War. Got a job rebuilding old airplanes but that company sucked so I went to law school. Came out of that just in time for tort reform to keep me from getting a steady job, although I worked parttime for other lawyers. So next I became a firefighter and eventually specialized in various types of technical rescue. After about 8 years, I needed a break from all the death and destruction so drove 18-wheelers all over the US for a few years, then went back to firefighting for a while, but I was getting too old for it. So now I work for Storm Eagle Studios with Norm Koger and Jim Rose making war simulations. But that doesn't pay enough in today's world, so I also deliver packages for FedEx 2 days a week.